Flying High, Saving Low: Getting Better
· Free Press Journal
The Prime Minister’s recent selfie message from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, delivered during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, offers an intriguing lesson in domestic economic discipline.
A selfie cuts deeper than the standard issue ‘mann ki baat’, it must be stated, in keeping with the image of the age. Issuing a firm directive against non-essential foreign leisure travel, overseas destination weddings, and unnecessary gold acquisitions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi neatly tied individual frugality to the overarching national ambition of a Viksit Bharat.
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Sharp-eyed observers will recall that this is entirely consistent with his earlier economic messaging as well. Right around May 10 and May 11, the Prime Minister made a nearly identical appeal from Vadodara, Gujarat, advising citizens to curtail foreign excursions and gold consumption to safeguard foreign exchange reserves.
Scarcely had those Vadodara words settled before he embarked, true to the demands of statecraft, on a strenuous high-intensity five-nation tour of the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Italy. Somebody has to do the heavy lifting, after all. The Vadodara appeal was for a year. This time there is no expiry date. It is open-ended. That surely must be good news. It's getting better all the time!
Public Austerity And Official Travel
Critics frequently cavil at these appeals for public austerity and official overseas mobility. Such carping fundamentally misunderstands the physics of state finance. Since taking office in 2014, the Prime Minister has undertaken 104 international trips, visiting 82 countries.
To maintain this frequent-flyer tempo, Parliament has been informed that expenditures crossed Rs 550 crore for trips since 2021 alone, contributing to an overall multi-thousand-crore tally across his tenure when factoring in legacy charter and logistics accounts.
Across this tenure, he has spent roughly 350 to 400-plus cumulative days abroad, which works out to an average of about 30 to 35 days per year outside the country. It is guesstimated that the costs could be in the ballpark range of Rs 2,000 crore cumulative expenditure.
To contextualise this scale against provincial administration, a Rs 2,000 crore outlay probably represents more than a fifth—roughly 21 per cent—of the entire annual education budget of a hill state like Himachal Pradesh, which stands at Rs 9,666 crore.
Swadeshi Logic And Value
Yet for New Delhi, the arithmetic is a self-evident no-brainer. There is, after all, nothing comparable for, let’s say, an average Delhiite to plan a honeymoon in Karkardooma and make selfie reels there as opposed to, let’s say, Krakatoa when calculating genuine national return on investment.
It pushes the Swadeshi logic and fetches more bang for the buck. Remember this only: the GDP figures continue to soar higher and climb faster than the Prime Minister’s aircraft so long as the Prime Minister stays aloft over foreign skies.
This is clearly established. If each diplomatic voyage adds fresh momentum to national accounts and secures strategic dividends, the exchequer is plainly receiving stellar value for money.